Villagers who turned a redundant red telephone box into an alehouse for a night in the hope of claiming a world record for the UK have been dealt a bitter blow.

Record-keepers said The Dog and Bone - opened in Shepreth, Cambridgeshire, earlier this month - did not qualify as the world's smallest pub.

Officials at Guinness World Records said the 3x3ft ex-phone box would have had to be licensed and open regular hours in order to be called a pub.

They said the Smallest Whisky Bar on Earth in Graubunden, Switzerland - which has a floor area measuring 91.82 feet - was still officially the smallest pub in the world.

People in Shepreth converted their phone box as part of a campaign to keep village pub The Plough alive. They gave beer away, but accepted donations to a village fund and called time when a barrel of beer ran dry.

Villagers aim to stop The Plough, which closed after being turned into a restaurant, being converted into a house.

They want planners at South Cambridgeshire District Council to rule that the building, a popular haunt with Second World War pilots, must be used as a pub.

"We thought an alehouse in a phone box was a certainty to make the Guinness Book of Records," said Richard Handford, who is helping run the Save the Plough campaign.

"It's a bitter blow to discover that we won't be record breakers. Pity The Plough's not open - we could drown our sorrows."